1NC
“Legalize” must make an activity lawful--- doesn’t allow discretion to prohibit
Quinn 92 – Judge Quinn, Supreme Court of Colorado, 826 P.2d 1241; 1992 Colo. LEXIS 53; 16
BTR 133, 1-27, Lexis
Turning to Verlo's claim, we
are satisfied that the Board's use of the term "legalize" in the title and in the ballot title and submission
and fairly expresses the true intent and meaning of the proposed constitutional amendment. The
word "legalize" means "to make legal" or "to give legal validity or sanction to." Webster's Third New International
Dictionary 1290 (1986); see also Black's Law Dictionary (6th ed. 1990) (legalize means "to make legal or lawful" or
"to confirm or validate what was before void or unlawful"). In the context of the phrase "to
legalize limited gaming in the cities of Manitou Springs and Fairplay," the word "legalize" expresses the sense
that these cities will be required to legislate so as to make limited gaming legal within their
respective municipalities. Contrary to Verlo's argument, we do not construe the word "legalize" as somehow
suggesting that the cities of Manitou Springs and Fairplay [**11] will retain the discretion either to legalize or
to prohibit limited gaming as they see fit. The Board's decision to add a sentence to the summary stating that under the
clause correctly
proposed constitutional amendment the cities of Manitou Springs and Fairplay would be "required to enact certain ordinances to implement limited
gaming" merely expands upon what is conveyed in the title and in the ballot title and submission clause by the phrase "to legalize limited gaming in the
cities of Manitou Springs and Fairplay." Nothing in the record persuades
us that the Board's choice of language in the title
and in the ballot title and submission clause is in any way misrepresentative of the true intent and meaning of the proposed
constitutional amendment. We accordingly affirm the ruling of the Board.
They “constrain the United States Congress’ constitutional Commerce Clause
authority to prohibit marihuana.” This leaves the CSA prohibition on the booksthe plan is an example of conditional non-enforcement pending a different legal
justification in the courts
Treanor and Sperling 1993 (William and Gene, Prof Law @ Fordham, Deputy Assistant to President for Economic
Policy, Columbia LR, Dec)
Unlike the Supreme Court, several state courts have explicitly addressed the revival issue. The relevant state court
cases have concerned the specific issue of whether a statute that has been held unconstitutional is revived when the invalidating
decision is overturned. 42 With one exception, they have concluded that such statutes are immediately enforceable. The most noted
instance in which the revival issue was resolved by a court involved the District of Columbia minimum wage statute pronounced
unconstitutional in Adkins. After the Court reversed Adkins in West Coast Hotel, President Roosevelt asked Attorney General Homer
[*1913] Cummings for an opinion on the status of the District of Columbia's statute. The Attorney General responded, The
decisions are practically in accord in holding that the courts have no power to repeal or abolish
a statute, and that notwithstanding a decision holding it unconstitutional a statute continues to
remain on the statute books; and that if a statute be declared unconstitutional and the decision
so declaring it be subsequently overruled the statute will then be held valid from the date it became
effective. 43 Enforcement of the statute followed without congressional action. 44 When this enforcement
was challenged, the Municipal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in Jawish v. Morlet 45 held that the decision in West
Coast Hotel had had the effect of making the statute enforceable. The court observed that previous opinions addressing the revival
issue proceed on the principle that a
statute declared unconstitutional is void in the sense that it is
inoperative or unenforceable, but not void in the sense that it is repealed or abolished; that so long as
the decision stands the statute is dormant but not dead; and that if the decision is reversed the statute
is valid from its first effective date. 46 The court declared this precedent sound since the cases were "in accord with the
principle "that a decision of a court of appellate jurisdiction overruling a former decision is retrospective in its
operation, and the effect is not that the former decision is bad law but that it never was the law.'
" 47 Adkins was thus, and had always been, a nullity. The court acknowledged that, after Adkins, it had been thought that the District
of Columbia's minimum wage statute was unconstitutional. As the court put it, " "Just about everybody was fooled.' " 48
Nonetheless, the
court's view was that since the minimum wage law had always been valid, although
for a period judicially unenforceable, there was no need to reenact it. 49 Almost all other courts
that have addressed the issue of whether a statute that has been found unconstitutional can be revived have
reached the same result as the Jawish court, using a similar formalistic [*1914] analysis. 50 The sole decision in which a
court adopted the nonrevival position is Jefferson v. Jefferson, 51 a poorly reasoned decision of the Louisiana Supreme Court. The
plaintiff in Jefferson sought child support and maintenance from her husband. She prevailed at the trial level; he filed his notice of
appeal one day after the end of the filing period established by the Louisiana Uniform Rules of the Court of Appeals. The Court of
Appeals rejected his appeal as untimely, even though the Louisiana Supreme Court had previously found that the applicable section
of the Uniform Rules violated the state constitution. One of Ms. Jefferson's arguments before the state Supreme Court was that that
court's previous ruling had been erroneous and that the rules should therefore be revived. In rejecting this claim and in finding for
the husband, the Court stated: Since we have declared the uniform court rule partially unconstitutional, it appears to be somewhat
dubious that we have the right to reconsider this ruling in the instant case as counsel for the respondent judges urges us to do. For a
rule of court, like a statute, has the force and effect of law and, when a law is stricken as void, it no longer has existence as law; the
law cannot be resurrected thereafter by a judicial decree changing the final judgment of unconstitutionality to constitutionality as
this would constitute a reenactment of the law by the Court - an assumption of legislative power not delegated to it by the
Constitution. 52 The Louisiana Court thus took a mechanical approach to the revival question. According to its rationale, when a
statute is found unconstitutional, it is judicially determined never to have existed. Revival therefore entails judicial legislation and
thereby violates constitutionally mandated separation of powers: because the initial legislative passage [*1915] of the bill has no
legitimacy, the bill's force is considered to be purely a creature of judicial decision-making. Jefferson has little analytic appeal. Its
view of the separation of powers doctrine is too simplistic. Contrary to the Jefferson rationale, a "revived" law is not the pure
product of judicial decision-making. It
is, instead, a law that once gained the support of a legislature and that
has never been legislatively repealed. Its legitimacy rests on its initial legislative authorization.
Moreover, the view that a statute that has been found unconstitutional should be treated as if it
never existed may have had some support in the early case law, but it has been clearly rejected by the Supreme
Court. Instead of treating all statutes that it has found unconstitutional as if they had never existed, the Court has recognized a
range of circumstances in which people who rely on an overturned decision are protected. Indeed, as will be developed, the doctrine
of prospective overruling evolved to shield from harm those who relied on subsequently overruled judicial decisions. 53 In short, the
one case in which there was a holding that a statute did not revive does not offer a convincing rationale for nonrevival.
Reasons to voteGround- the only predictable mechanism the neg can prepare for is removal of
the law, giving us non-enforcement and states-only CPs which compete on
leaving the law on the books- they give the aff too many mechanism options
and ways to spike out of DA links
Bidirectionality- their plan doesn’t even find the CSA unconstitutional- it just
says that one justification no longer works- this would let them read
advantages like “the law would be reasserted under the treaty power- treaty
power good” and spike all our legalization bad arguments
Dupont et al 04 [Robert L. DuPont et al 4, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown
Medical School, President of the Institute for Behavior and Health, Inc. and Vice-president of
Bensinger, DuPont and Associates, was the first Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse
(NIDA) and the second Director of the White House Special Action Office for Drug Abuse
Prevention, 2004, Brief of Amici Curiae in Support of Petitioners, John Ashcroft et al v. Angel
McClary Raich et al, Supreme Court of the United States, No. 03-1454,
http://www.ibhinc.org/pdfs/ARAmicusBrief.pdf]
I. The Treaty Power Provides a Separate and Independent Source of Congressional Power in This Case.
While Congress must certainly regulate in accordance with its enumerated powers, the
Commerce Clause does not provide the sole source of congressional authority in this case. The United
States may enter into treaties governing matters of international concern and impact. Such treaties, in
conjunction with the federal Constitution and federal legislation, comprise the supreme law of the
land. U.S. Const. Art. II, sec. 2. cl. 2 (power of the President to enter into treaties); U.S. Const.
Art. VI, cl. 2. Congress has the power to enact all laws "necessary and proper for carrying into
Execution...all...Powers granted by this Constitution." U.S. Const. Art. I, sec.8, cl. 18. Accordingly,
Congress has the power to enact laws implementing the United States' obligations under
treaties to which the U.S. is a signatory. The Controlled Substances Act, 21 U.S.C. sec. 801 et seq.
(1970), ("CSA") is such a law, and its regulation of the class of activity in this case is necessary to
fulfill those obligations. Federal laws, like the CSA, which implement U.S. treaty obligations, are
unquestionably a valid exercise of congressional power, even in the face of conflicting state laws." In
Missouri v. Ho/land, 252 U.S. 416 (1920), this Court upheld the power of Congress to enact
legislation, pursuant to a treaty, despite contrary state law. The Court stressed that such legislation—in
that case the Migratory Bird Treaty Act—stands on a separate basis of congressional power, and
rejected the argument that Congress must have independent constitutional authority separate from a
treaty as a basis for enacting legislation. Id. at 432-33. The CSA's comprehensive regulatory structure,
too, is supported by the Treaty Power, as well by Congress' authority under the Commerce Clause.
FX- even if the effect of the plan would be a removal of the law- it is not a
mandate of the plan- effects T is an independent voter because it allows too
many unpredictable steps between plan action and the topic which explodes
limits
K
Terrorism discourse is wrong and leads to war
Cortright 8 [David, President of the Fourth Freedom Forum and research fellow for the Joan B. Kroc
Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame, 2008 (“Peace: A History of
Movements and Ideas.” Pg. 125]
In recent years terrorism has replaced communism as the new frame of dehumanization. It has
been used to lump together all those who are considered enemies. The victims of US bombing
and attack in Iraq are branded terrorists, regardless of the specific circumstances involved. The
so-called “global war on terror” is used to justify any and all measures – invasion, war, military
occupation, torture, indefinite internment, warrantless wiretapping – whatever may be deemed
necessary by government officials to defeat the “evil” enemy. Fighting terrorism offers a
rationalization for what is otherwise unjustifiable, just as during the cold war the fight against
communism provided the justification for the unthinkable.
This means only the alt can ever solve terrorism.
Butler 4 (Judith, Professor of Rhetoric and Comparitive Literature @ the University of
California, Berkley, “Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence”, pg 15-18)
So, is there a way, in Roy's terms, to understand bin Laden as "born" from the rib of US imperialism
(allowing that he is born from several possible historical sources, one of which is, crucially, US imperialism), without claiming that US
imperialism is solely responsible for his actions, or those of his ostensible network? To answer this question, we
need to
distinguish, provisionally, between individual and collective responsibility. But, then we need to situate
individual responsibility in light of its collective conditions. Those who commit acts of violence are surely
responsible for them; they are not dupes or mechanisms of an impersonal social force, but agents with
responsibility. On the other hand, these individuals are formed, and we would be making a
mistake if we reduced their actions to purely self-generated acts of will or symptoms of
individual pathology or "evil." Both the discourse of individualism and of moralism (understood as the moment in which
morality exhausts itself in public acts of denunciation) assume that the individual is the first link in a causal chain that forms the
meaning of accountability. But to
take the self-generated acts of the individual as our point of departure
in moral reasoning is precisely to foreclose the possibility of questioning what kind of world
gives rise to such individuals. And what is this process of "giving rise"? What social conditions help to form the very ways
that choice and deliberation proceed? Where and how can such subject formations be contravened? How is it that radical
violence becomes an option, comes to appear as the only viable option for some, under some global conditions? Against
what conditions of violation do they respond? And with what resources? To ask these questions is not to say that
the conditions are at fault rather than the individual. It is, rather, to rethink the relation
between conditions and acts. Our acts are not self-generated, but conditioned. We are at once acted
upon and acting, and our "responsibility" lies in the juncture between the two. What can I do with the conditions that form me?
What do they constrain me to do? What can I do to transform them? Being acted upon is not fully continuous with acting, and in this
way the forces that act upon us are not finally responsible for what we do. In a certain way, and paradoxically, our responsibility is
heightened once we have been subjected to the violence of others. We
are acted upon, violently, and it appears
that our capacity to set our own course at such instances is fully undermined. Only once we have
suffered that violence are we compelled, ethically, to ask how we will respond to violent injury. What role will we assume in the
historical relay of violence, who will we become in the response, and will we be furthering or impeding violence by virtue of the
response that we make? To
respond to violence with violence may well seem "justified," but is it finally
a responsible solution? Similarly, moralistic denunciation provides immediate gratification, and even has the effect of
temporarily cleansing the speaker of all proximity to guilt through the act of self-righteous denunciation itself. But is this the same as
responsibility, understood as taking stock of our world, and participating in its social transformation in such a way that non-violent,
cooperative, egalitarian international relations remain the guiding ideal? We
ask these latter questions not to
exonerate the individuals who commit violence, but to take a different sort of responsibility for
the global conditions of justice. As a result, it made sense after 9/11 to follow two courses of action at once: to find those who
planned and implemented the violence and to hold them accountable according to international war crimes standards and in
international courts of law, regardless of our skepticism about such institutions (skepticism can furnish grounds for reform or for the
making of new law or new institutions for implementing law). In pursuing
a wayward military solution, the United
States perpetrates and displays its own violence, offering a breeding ground for new waves of
young Muslims to join terrorist organizations. This is poor thinking, strategically and morally. Ignoring its image as the hated
enemy for many in the region, the United States has effectively responded to the violence done against it by consolidating its
reputation as a militaristic power with no respect for lives outside of the First World. That we now respond with more violence is
taken as "further proof" that the United States has violent and anti-sovereign designs on the region. To remember the lessons of
Aeschylus, and to
refuse this cycle of revenge in the name of justice, means not only to seek legal redress for wrongs
done, but to take stock of how the world has become formed in this way precisely in order to form
it anew, and in the direction of non-violence. Our collective responsibility not merely as a nation, but as part of an
international community based on a commitment to equality and non-violent cooperation, requires that we ask how these
conditions came about, and
endeavor to re-create social and political conditions on more sustaining
grounds. This means, in part, hearing beyond what we are able to hear. And it means as well being open to narration that
decenters us from our supremacy, in both its right- and left-wing forms. Can we hear that there were precedents for these events
and even know that it is urgent to know and learn from these precedents as we seek to stop them from operating in the present, at
the same time as we insist that these precedents do not "justify" the recent violent events? If the
events are not
understandable without that history, that does not mean that the historical understanding furnishes a moral
justification for the events themselves. Only then do we reach the disposition to get to the "root" of
violence, and begin to offer another vision of the future than that which perpetuates violence in
the name of denying it, offering instead names for things that restrain us from thinking and acting radically and well about
global options.
Linking famine and war kills possible solutions to it and promotes Western interests
Barnett (Senior Lecturer, School of Anthropology, Geography, and Environmental Studies, University of
Melbourne; Ph.D., Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies) 2k
(Jon, “Destabilizing the Environment-Conflict Thesis,” Review of International Studies 26(2): 271–288)
The ways in which population growth leads to environmental degradation are reasonably well
known. However, the particular ways in which this leads to conflict re difficult to prove. In the
absence of proof there is a negative style of argu mentation, and there are blanket assertions and
abrogations; for example: 'the relationship is rarely causative in a direct fashion', but 'we may
surmise that conflict would not arise so readily, nor would it prove so acute, if the associated
factor of population growth were occurring at a more manageable rate'.38 It is possible though,
that rather than inducing warfare, overpopulation and famine reduce the capacity of a people to
wage war. Indeed, it is less the case that famines in Africa in recent decades have produced
'first rate breeding grounds for conflict'; the more important, pressing, and avoidable product is
widespread malnutrition and large loss of life. To equate famine with warfare and threat is to
deny the prima facie issue of the responsibility of the industrialized world to those in affected
regions. To focus on the conflict potential is to ignore the real causes of poverty and
vulnerability, namely the economic disadvantages people in the industrializing world
experience from their exposure to global capital. Ignoring global processes also leads to
impoverished policy.39 Vulnerability to famine can be lessened through substantial increases in
access to employment, health care, education for women and children, and contra ception.
Resilience to famine can be enhanced by protecting traditional societies from the disruptive
effects of modern society, by creating safe political conditions, and by permitting more
autonomous governance at the local level. The con sequences of famine can be lessened by
making use of the efficient collection and delivery mechanisms that characterize world trade
between industrialized nations to deliver necessary supplies. All these mainstream development
concerns are ignored or treated as afterthoughts when the issue of population growth is
understood as a probable cause of war.
Our alternative is to demilitarize the public sphere, bottom up rejection of
security politics allows us to move beyond an unsustainable system that leads to
inevitable threat escalation
LAL, 2007
(PRERNA P., MASTER OF ARTS IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS @ SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY,
SENIOR GRADUATE THESIS, CRITICAL SECURITY STUDIES, “DECONSTRUCTING THE NATIONAL SECURITY
STATE: TOWARDS A NEW FRAMEWORK OF ANALYSIS,” HTTP://PRERNALAL.COM/WPCONTENT/UPLOADS/2008/10/CSS-DECONSTRUCTING-THE-NAT-SEC-STATE.PDF)
Throughout this paper, we have seen cases of how national security is an antonym for
human security. With this essential realization, Booth (2005, 33) gives three reasons for
why the state should not be the referent object of security: “states are unreliable as
primary referents because while some are in the business of security some are not;
even those which are producers of security represent the means and not the ends; and
states are too diverse in their character to serve as the basis for a comprehensive
theory of security.” Additionally, the cases of South Africa and Afghanistan prove how
the national security state is merely an elite tool, which causes human insecurity at
home and abroad. The state treats security as a problem that comes from the outside,
rather than as a problem that can arise from domestic issues. The end result of statecentric security is that humans are alienated from discussions about their own security
and welfare. The most compelling reason is provided by Hayward Akler (2005, 191) in
Critical Security Studies and World Politics, in which he states that “economic collapse,
political oppression, scarcity, overpopulation, ethnic rivalry, the destruction of nature,
terrorism, crime and disease provide more serious threats to the well-being of
individuals and the interest of nations.” Thus, to millions of people, it is not the
existence of the Other across the border that poses a security problem, but their own
state that is a threat to security. The question that arises next is how to put critical
theory into practice and deconstruct the national security state. Critical theory does
not offer simple one-shot solutions to the problems created by the neo-realist state
and elitist conception of security. To give simple answers would be a performative
contradiction, especially after criticizing realism for being intellectually rigid for
believing in objective truth. In other words, there are no alternatives; just alternative
modes of understanding. However, using the poststructuralist Foucaultian analysis
that discourse is power, we can move towards deconstructing the power of the state
and elites to securitize using their own tool: discourse. The elites who control the
meaning of security and define it in terms that are appropriate to their interests hold
tremendous power in the national security state. As Foucault astutely observed, “the
exercise of power is always deeply entwined with the production of knowledge and
discourse” (Dalby 1998, 4). For too long, language has been used against us to create
our reality, thereby obfuscating our lens of the world, depriving us from an objective
search for truth and knowledge. The history of colonized people shows how the
construction of language defined and justified their oppressed status. In a way, we are
colonized through discursive practices and subjected to the reality that the state
wants us to see. However, definitions belong to the definer, and it is high time that we
questioned and defined our own reality. Thus, citizen action is critical to questioning
and deconstructing the national security state and taking away its power to define our
security. In On Security, Pearl Alice Marsh (1995, 126) advances the idea of a grassroots
statecraft that is defined as “challenging foreign policy of government through
contending discursive and speech acts.” This calls for pitting the values of civil society
against the state establishment and challenging the American statecraft’s freedom to
cast issues and events in a security or militarized framework. The United States has
not always been a national security state and neither does it have to maintain that
hegemonic and oppressive status in order to exist. It is critical to remember that
fundamental changes in our institutions and structures of power do not occur from
the top; they originate from the bottom. History is case in point. Citizen action was
critical to ending the Red Scare and the Vietnam War, as the American people realized
the ludicrousness of framing Vietnam as a security issue, which led to the fall of the
Second New Deal, the deaths of thousands of American soldiers and a financial cost that
we are still shouldering. In the end, what they need to be secured from and how, is a
question best left up to individual Americans and subsequently, civil society. Thus,
grassroots citizen action performatively makes individuals the referent subject of
security as people would call for the demilitarization and desecuritization of issues
that are contrary and irrelevant to human security. There is hope for the future and
practical application of critical theory in international relations. As Robert Lipschutz
(2000, 61) concludes in After Authority: War, Peace, and Global Politics in the 21st
Century, “it was the existence of the Other across the border that gave national
security its power and authority; it is the disappearance of the border that has
vanquished that power.” Britain, France and Germany set aside their historical
enmities and became part of a European community, which has formed a new
collective identity and security across borders. Cold War rivals that almost annihilated
the world are now friends in the “war against terror.” The apartheid regime in South
Africa did collapse eventually. In the past two years, India and Pakistan have been
moving towards a more peaceful future that also includes fighting the “war against
terror” together. While nation-states that were previously hostile to each other have
united to be hostile towards other states, it is not overly idealist to suggest that with
each new friendship and alliance, there is one less foe and one less Other. The world is
not stable and stagnant, existing in an anarchic, nasty and brutish framework in which
states have to endlessly bargain for their self-interest, as realists would like us to
believe. On the contrary, international relations and the boundaries constructed by
the state are subject to change and ever-transitioning, which presents a compelling
case for critical theory as a more realistic framework through which we can view
international relations. Therefore, our ultimate search for security does not lie in
securing the state from the threat of the enemy across the border, but in removing
the state as the referent object of security and moving towards human emancipation.
Human emancipation is often cited as the ultimate goal of the CSS project. Kenneth
Booth (2005, 181) defines human emancipation as “the theory and practice of inventing
humanity, with a view of freeing people, as individuals and collectivities, from
contingent and structural oppressions...the concept of emancipation shapes strategies
and tactics of resistance, offers a theory of progress for society, and gives a politics of
hope for common humanity.” For Booth then, human emancipation is a concern with
questioning and changing structures and institutions that oppress us and prevent us
from reaching our true potential, a seemingly Marxist and poststructuralist concern.
Emancipation and security become two sides of the same coin for Booth (2005, 191),
as humans must be freed from their oppressive structures and overthrow physical and
human constraints that prevent them from reaching their true potential. However,
emancipation is not the end-all solution but a project that can never be fully realized.
This may lead some to question the practicality of the concept. Here, I will draw an
analogy from Karl Marx, whose idea of human emancipation was communism, a goal
that we can see in the horizon, but the closer we get to it, the further away it seems.
Yet, when we look back, we see how far we have come. Therefore, human
emancipation serves practical purpose as an immanent critique, which can be utilized
as a philosophical anchorage for tactical goal setting.
1NC
Court will rule for the executive in Zivotofsky now but it’s close and requires
ruling against Congress
Victoria Kwan 11/7, Blog Editor for The Brooklyn Quarterly, citing Abed Ayoub, Legal & Policy
Director of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, “A Tinderbox of a Case,”
http://brooklynquarterly.org/tinderbox-case/
Abed Ayoub thinks that it’s
going to be a close decision in Zivotofsky v. Kerry, the separation of powers
battle between Congress and the President over U.S. policy on Jerusalem that is currently under consideration at the Supreme
Court.¶ “I’d predict a 5-4 decision for the State Department, or possibly even 6-3.” Ayoub, the Legal and Policy Director
for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), said this week after attending the Court’s oral argument in Zivotofsky. ¶ The case’s central
figure is a 12-year-old Jerusalem-born American citizen, Menachem Zivotofsky, who wants the birthplace line in his passport to say “Israel.” While this
sounds like a simple enough request, the Executive branch has a longstanding policy of not recognizing any state’s sovereignty over the city, so his
passport merely says that he is born in “Jerusalem,” with no designated country of birth. Zivotofsky
and his parents invoked a
2002 law passed by Congress that included a section (known as Section 214(d)) ordering the State Department to
amend the birthplace from “Jerusalem” to “Israel” for any American citizen who requests the
change. But the State Department refused to do so for Zivotofsky, citing Congress’ intrusion into the
Executive’s power to determine foreign policy and the harm that even a one-word change
would inflict on American diplomacy efforts in the already-volatile Middle East. Zivotofsky took the dispute
to the Supreme Court, which must decide whether Section 214(d) is a proper exercise of Congress’ constitutional powers. ¶ Because the law Congress
wrote addresses only Jerusalem’s relationship to Israel, Palestinian Americans born in that city do not have the option of swapping out “Jerusalem” for
“Palestine” in their passports, which is where the ADC comes in. The organization, which describes itself as the country’s largest Arab American civil
rights grassroots group, is adamant in its belief that Jerusalem is not a part of Israel. If the ADC had its way, the passports of all Americans born in
Jerusalem would list “Palestine” as the place of birth. Since it is unlikely that Congress or the Executive would approve such a policy, however, the ADC
wants Palestinian Americans to at least be able to pick Palestine as their country of birth—the same right to self-identification that Zivotofsky argues he
should have.¶ According to Ayoub, most of the ADC’s staff attended the oral
argument on Monday, including the team of attorneys who had
submitted an amicus brief in support of the State Department. “The questions were in line with what we anticipated,” he
said. They were pleased when Justice Elena Kagan characterized Section 214(d) as a “very selective vanity plate
law” and Jerusalem as a “tinderbox” where the United States government’s every move regarding Israel or Palestine matters. They
did not agree with Justice Antonin Scalia’s comments that the Palestinians’ feelings toward the matter were “irrelevant” or Chief Justice John G.
Roberts, Jr.’s questions about whether the law would actually have “such dramatic effects on American foreign policy.” Overall, though, Ayoub thought
that the justices “really got to the nuts and bolts of the questions at hand.” ¶ The only moment that was “genuinely surprising” came when Justice
Samuel A. Alito, Jr., in the course of questioning Zivotofsky’s attorney, said that he did not “completely understand… the position of the United
States regarding Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem.” Ayoub had expected the justices to be familiar with the Executive’s official policy already. Despite
this and Alito’s skepticism of the State Department’s position at oral argument, Ayoub still thinks that the 64-year-old justice might wind up being
the fifth or sixth vote
for the Executive, alongside Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan. “He had
good questions.” Ayoub is also hopeful that Justice Anthony M. Kennedy will vote to strike down Section
214(d). He sensed that “Kennedy was thinking about how the United States could be neutral on this”–the justice had suggested early on that the
Executive could put “Israel” as the country of birth, but then add a disclaimer to say the birthplace line is neither an acknowledgment nor a declaration
by the State Department or the President that Jerusalem belongs to Israel–but predicted that “[Kennedy]
would probably fall on
the side of the government.”
The plan trades off---the Court has limited willingness to fight Congress by
striking down statutes
Ernest A. Young 99, Assistant Professor at the University of Texas School of Law, 1999,
“ARTICLE: State Sovereign Immunity and the Future of Federalism,” Supreme Court Review,
1999 Sup. Ct. Rev. 1, p. lexis
The opportunity cost of immunity rulings. The first reason, and the simplest, is that the
Court has limited political capital. n261 As
Dean Choper has argued, "the federal judiciary's ability to persuade the populace and public leaders that it is
right and they are wrong is determined by the number and frequency of its attempts [*59] to do so, the felt
importance of the policies it disapproves, and the perceived substantive correctness of its decisions." n262 There is thus
likely to be, at some point, a limit on the Court's ability to continue striking down federal statutes in the
name of states' rights. n263 To the extent that this limit exists, then the Court's extended adventure in aggressive enforcement of state sovereign
immunity will trade off with its ability to develop a meaningful jurisprudence of process or power federalism. If protecting state authority to regulate
private conduct is the key to a viable state/federal balance, then a considered reaffirmation, explanation, or extension of Lopez may do more good than
another expansion of Seminole Tribe. ¶ "Political capital," of course, is a pretty vague concept. It might be that the Court's ability to enforce federalism
limits is more like muscles than money: it atrophies unless it is exercised regularly. n264 The National League of Cities story arguably illustrates this
phenomenon, in that the Court's failure to apply the doctrine to check federal power in a series of subsequent cases may have helped lead to the
outright rejection of the doctrine in Garcia. n265 The
important point, however, is that the Justices who matter most
on these issues tend to think in terms of limited capital and worry about judicial actions that may
draw down the reserves. n266 Political capital [*60] is thus likely to function as an internal constraint
on the Court's willingness repeatedly to confront Congress.
Destroys US ability to mediate tensions and prevent war in the Middle East
Abed Ayoub 10/31, Legal & Policy Director of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination
Committee, “Expert Q&A: The US Supreme Court & Jerusalem (Zivotofsky v. Kerry)”
http://imeu.org/article/expert-qa-the-us-supreme-court-jerusalem-zivotofsky-v.-kerry
Q - What would be the implications, legal and otherwise,
if the justices rule in favor of the plaintiff?¶ AA - “Preliminarily, the decision may
require the U.S. Department of State to comply with all requests by U.S. citizens born in Jerusalem to have their country of birth recorded as Israel on their passport. The
it will constitute a
concrete and symbolic recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem by the United States.
First, this recognition will place the U.S. at odds with its current policy to remain neutral on
Jerusalem and the international community consensus that the entire city of Jerusalem is not part of Israel.
Department of State will not be able to refuse, contrary to current policy and practice, to record the place of birth as Jerusalem. ¶ “Foremost,
The pre-1967 boundaries as established by the 1949 armistice agreements and under international law through several United Nations resolutions recognize that East Jerusalem
is part of Palestine. Under Section 214(d) all of Jerusalem, not just West Jerusalem, can be identified as part of Israel. Thus Section 214(d) recognition will explicitly constitute
U.S. support and approval of Israel’s illegal annexation of East Jerusalem and Israel’s continuous violations of international law through the ongoing building of Israeli
settlements in East Jerusalem. So not only will this case force the Executive to recognize Jerusalem as the capital and under the sovereignty of Israel but also the territorial
boundaries of Palestine, disregarding the national origin of thousands of Palestinian Americans and violating international law. Thousands of Palestinian Americans’ right to also
this will immediately hinder the role of the
U.S. in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and in the Middle East. The sensitive status of Jerusalem is at the center
of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and tensions in the Middle East. The U.S.'s neutrality has been key in easing
tensions, as well as in bringing both sides to the table to resolve armed conflicts. Thus not only will U.S.
credibility in the international community be at stake, which has broad implications on foreign affairs
beyond the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but also the U.S. role as a key negotiating partner for a two-state solution.¶ “The sensitive status of
Jerusalem has further implications. To recognize Jerusalem as part of Israel, a Jewish state, will also recognize Jerusalem as a Jewish state. To indicate
recognition of Jerusalem as part of a Jewish state will directly impact and alienate the Christian
and Muslim communities. They hold Jerusalem as religious sacred “holy land” and have legitimate ties to Jerusalem. Additionally, the case may
also open the door and set a precedent to allow Congress to legislate on other sensitive foreign affairs issues
that are usually reserved for the Executive, especially issues concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
and the Middle East, effectively abrogating the power of the Executive and shifting the balance
of powers largely to Congress. With this comes serious concern of biased and/or discriminatorily motivated legislation against and/or at the expense of
recognize Jerusalem as part of and/or the capital of Palestine is not recognized. ¶ “Second,
Palestine and Palestinian Americans.”
Global nuclear war
James Russell 9, Senior Lecturer Department of National Security Affairs, Spring, “Strategic
Stability Reconsidered: Prospects for Escalation and Nuclear War in the Middle East” Security
Studies Center Proliferation Papers, http://www.analystnetwork.com/articles/141/StrategicStabilityReconsideredProspectsforEscalationandNuclearWari
ntheMiddleEast.pdf
Strategic stability in the region is thus undermined by various factors asymmetric interests in
the bargaining framework that can introduce unpredictable behavior from actors; the presence
of non-state actors
incompatible assumptions about the structure
of the deterrent relationship
perceptions by Israel and the United States
that its window of opportunity for military action is closing, which could prompt a preventive
attack
the lack of a
communications framework to build trust and cooperation among framework participants.
escalation by any the parties could happen either on purpose or as a
result of miscalculation
it is disturbingly easy to imagine scenarios under
which a conflict could quickly escalate in which the regional antagonists would consider the use
of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. It would be a mistake to believe the nuclear taboo
can somehow magically keep nuclear weapons from being used in the context of an unstable
strategic framework. Systemic asymmetries between actors in fact suggest a certain increase in
the probability of war – a war in which escalation could happen quickly and from a variety of
participants.
such an outcome would be an unprecedented disaster for the peoples of the
region, with substantial risk for the entire world.
: (1)
(2)
that introduce unpredictability into relationships between the antagonists; (3)
that makes the bargaining framework strategically unstable; (4)
; (5) the prospect that Iran’s response to pre-emptive attacks could involve unconventional weapons, which could prompt escalation by Israel and/or the United States; (6)
These
systemic weaknesses in the coercive bargaining framework all suggest that
or the pressures of wartime circumstance. Given these factors,
Once such a war starts, events would likely develop a momentum all their own and decision-making would consequently be shaped in unpredictable ways. The international community must take this possibility seriously, and
muster every tool at its disposal to prevent
, which
Treaties
Countries will stay within the treaty regime now despite push for change
Bewley-Taylor et al 2014 (Dave Bewley-Taylor, Tom Blickman and Martin Jelsma, Professor of International
Relations and Public Policy at Swansea University and founding Director of the Global Drug Policy Observatory, The Rise and Decline
of Cannabis Prohibition, http://www.tni.org/sites/www.tni.org/files/download/rise_and_decline_intro.pdf)
All these policy practices were interpreted by the implementing countries as respecting the
confines of treaty latitude. Most have a solid legal basis, others employ a certain legal creativity,
not always acknowledged by the INCB. And sometimes schemes perfectly justifiable in principle have been applied with a
“pragmatic” dose of hypocrisy. The
strictures of the conventions and the near impossibility to amend
them have impelled some countries to stretching their inbuilt flexibility and escape clauses to
questionable limits. Examples are the legal contradictions around the backdoor of the Dutch coffeeshops; the expansion of medical
marijuana schemes in some U.S. states into recreational use; and the establishment of large-scale commercial cannabis social clubs
in Spain. Indeed, while
a fundamental change in cannabis policy is increasingly viewed as a legitimate
option to consider in various parts of the world, the reputational (and possibly economic) costs of treaty
breach are likely to deter most states from moving beyond some form of soft defection.
Federal legalization violates the 1961 Single Convention
Rico 2014 (Bernardo, international banker and Central America development specialist, INROADS OR DETOURS in the Drug
Debate?, Americas Quarterly8.1 (Winter 2014): 40-45, proquest)
It's important, first of all, to understand that neither of these options has anything to do with "legalization." Legalizing a drug removes the prohibition
on its production, sale or consumption, albeit with government regulation. Uruguay is the only nation to have recently approved legislation to legalize
marijuana, which will allow the government to control most of the stages from production to consumption. Colorado and Washington are the only U.S.
states to have legalized the recreational use of marijuana; possession and sale for medical purposes is permitted in 20 other states. However,
marijuana remains on the U.S. federal government's list of "controlled substances" as an illegal
narcotic. Even though the U.S. Department of Justice has indicated it is reconsidering whether it will enforce federal penalties, marijuana
legalization still violates UN drug treaties, primarily the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic
Drugs.
CP keeps the treaty regime intact but the plan the destroys it
Bewley-Taylor et al 2014 (Dave Bewley-Taylor, Tom Blickman and Martin Jelsma, Professor of International
Relations and Public Policy at Swansea University and founding Director of the Global Drug Policy Observatory, The Rise and Decline
of Cannabis Prohibition, http://www.tni.org/sites/www.tni.org/files/download/rise_and_decline_web.pdf)
The United States has invested probably more effort than any other nation over the past century to
influence the design of the global control regime and enforce its almost universal adherence. If the U.S. now
proclaims it can no longer live by the regime’s rules, it risks undermining the legal instrument it
has used so often in the past to coerce other countries to operate in accordance with U.S. drug control policies and principles.
Officials in Washington have been trying to develop a legal argument, based on the August 2013
memorandum from the Justice Department regarding enforcement priorities, claiming that the U.S. is not
violating the treaties because cultivation, trade and possession of cannabis are still criminal
offences under federal drug law; and because the treaty provisions allow for considerable flexibility
regarding law enforcement practices, especially when there are conflicts with a party’s
constitution and domestic legal system. Using the expediency principle, the argument continues, federal law
enforcement intervention in state-level cannabis regulation is simply not high priority; but by allowing states de facto to regulate the
cannabis market, the federal government would not be violating its international treaty obligations because the approaches pursued
in Washington and Colorado are still prohibited under federal law. In legal terms, such a line of argumentation is easily contestable.
The INCB has pointed out in recent annual reports in reference to cannabis developments at state level in the U.S., a party is obliged
“to ensure the full implementation of the international drug control treaties on its entire territory”. Hence law enforcement priority
isn’t a valid consideration; rather the law needs to be in conformity with the treaties at all levels of jurisdiction. Any reference
regarding treaty flexibility based on the premise that the manner in which a party implements the provisions is “subject to its
constitutional principles and the basic concepts of its legal system” is also very problematic. While that principle applied to the 1961
Convention as a whole, the escape clause was deliberately deleted from the 1988 Convention with regard to the obligation to
establish cultivation, trade and possession as a criminal offence, except in relation to personal consumption mainly due to U.S.
pressure during the negotiations. Washington’s rationale was that it wanted to limit the flexibility the preceding conventions had left
to nation states. And finally (as mentioned in the section on Dutch coffeeshops in the previous chapter), the 1988 Convention
restricted the use of discretionary legal powers regarding cultivation and trafficking offences (article 3, paragraph 6). All that
notwithstanding, if,
the U.S. interpretation attracted a certain level of political acceptance and became
part of an extended practice of flexible treaty interpretation, significantly more room for
manoeuvre would open up. Other countries would be able to apply similar arguments, not only to
legally justify cannabis regulation, but for other currently contested policies as well, such as drug consumption rooms or legally
regulated markets for coca leaf. Accepting
such an argumentation would come close to a de facto
amendment by means of broad interpretation that would restore the escape clause for the entire 1988 Convention
(including for article 3, paragraph 1 (a) and (b) offences), and simultaneously annul the restrictions placed on the exercise of
discretionary powers under domestic law. The Netherlands, for example, made a special reservation upon ratification of the 1988
Convention, exempting the country from the limitations on prosecutorial discretion the treaty intended to impose. Even with such a
reservation in hand, however, the Dutch government has maintained thus far that the expediency principle under which the
coffeeshops are operating, could not be used to justify non-enforcement guidelines with regard to cannabis cultivation. That
position has often been challenged in the domestic policy debate as an excessively restrictive legal interpretation of existing treaty
flexibility. If
the U.S. now asserts that the treaties are sufficiently flexible to allow state control and
taxed regulation of cultivation and trade for non-medical purposes on its territory, accordingly the Netherlands could
comfortably extend the expediency principle to include the cultivation of cannabis destined to supply the
coffeeshops by issuing additional nonprosecution guidelines.
No ISIS impact – they’re doomed and regional containment is inevitable
Shashank Joshi, 6-25-2014; PhD candidate at Harvard Why an Isis caliphate is no more than a pipe dream
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/shashankjoshi/100277636/why-an-isis-caliphate-is-no-more-than-a-pipe-dream/
But the
question is whether it has staying power. There are good reasons to think that Isis’ caliphate could
run out of steam long before it matches the great Islamic empires of history. Isis has hostile forces in every
direction. It will face resistance from anti-Isis Syrian rebels in the west, the hostility of Kurds in
the north, and, eventually, a counter-offensive from government forces to the south. Even if the
government collapses – and we are a long way from that – then Iraq’s Shia majority will not accept a permanent
jihadist state on their northern flank, let alone allow Isis to stroll into Baghdad. Saddam slaughtered Shias in
1991, and Isis has been slaughtering Shias for over a decade. The Shias have had quite enough, thank you. Iraq’s neighbours
will also fight back. Ankara does not look kindly at the fact that Isis has kidnapped Turkish
diplomats in Mosul. Iran is not just aghast at the rise of a radical Sunni force on its western border,
but concerned about losing an ally in Baghdad that it views as more important than even Assad. Tehran is reportedly
airlifting over a hundred tons of supplies to Baghdad daily, and deployed its special forces there weeks ago. If Isis attempts to
conduct attacks against Western countries, as the prime minister warned last week, then it will face
the near certainty of air strikes. It can hunker down safely in urban areas like Mosul, but large stretches of its
territory are completely devoid of cover. It will suffer grievous losses. But Isis’ biggest challenge is
closer to home. It depends on a coalition of other Sunni militants and local Sunni tribes. Without
such allies, it could not possibly have walked over Iraqi security forces so easily. But coalitions like this can fall apart.
Remember that Isis was defeated once before, in its previous incarnation as Al Qaida in Iraq. Their
campaign of terror was quelled by 2008, thanks to a surge of US troops and the so-called
‘awakening’ of local Sunni tribes who grew tired of the group’s brutality.
Treaties solve warming empirically denied – stable drug control won’t make the
US sign the Kyoto Protocol, etc.
Commerce Clause
1AC Rauch evidence gives us the spillover link- also gives uniqueness
Rauch 2013 (Jonathan, guest scholar in Governance Studies at Brookings, contributing editor of National Journal and The
Atlantic, "Washington Versus Washington (and Colorado): Why the States Should Lead on Marijuana Policy," March 2013,
http://www.brookings.edu/~~/media/Research/Files/Papers/2013/3/26%20marijuana%20legalization%20localism%20rauch/Washi
ngton%20Versus%20Washington%20and%20Colorado_Rauch_v17.pdf)
How the courts might view such cooperative efforts, and where they might draw the line between states’ violating federal law and
their refusing to support it, and how much (if any) congressional action might be needed to sort it all out—all of those are
complicated questions on which legal opinions differ, and on which courts undoubtedly will differ as well. The statute books can
shape the outcome, but they cannot dictate it. Nor, for that matter, can drug policy preferences decide the matter, though they will
certainly bear upon it. Even if the country were united in, say, a desire to liberalize drug policy, the question would remain of who
should lead the change, frame the policy, and set the tempo. In short, there is no alternative to the exercise of political judgment.
Mature people will have to make conscious choices about how to manage social change and conflict with a minimum of unnecessary
pain and disruption. The
stakes transcend drug policy proper: marijuana legalization, far from
standing alone, is an installment in a series. In the past several years, state-federal conflict has become
a running theme of the national debate, on multiple hot-button issues and in multiple permutations: • On
immigration, the federal government demanded that the states follow federal policy. Arizona
claimed a right to independently enforce federal law, even if its enforcement priorities differed from those of the
federal government. It also asserted a right to supplement federal policies with its own more stringent
ones. The federal government objected, and the Supreme Court delivered a mixed ruling which
mostly favored the federal government. • On Obamacare (the 2010 Affordable Care Act), states demanded the right
not to follow federal policy. They challenged the law’s expansion of Medicaid and its mandate to buy health insurance. The Supreme
Court again delivered a mixed ruling, this time leaning toward the states. • On gay marriage, states demanded that the federal
government follow state policy. In suing to overturn the U.S. Defense of Marriage Act, they claimed that Washington, D.C., had to
follow states’ definitions of marriage rather than establish a separate definition of its own. The Supreme Court, at this writing, has
yet to rule. Unlike the cases of immigration and Obamacare and the Defense of Marriage Act, marijuana
involves not
merely friction between state and federal policy but something closer to outright defiance. Even in
a context of growing agitation in federal-state relations, this was putting a cat among the pigeons. Avoiding conflict or even chaos is
not going to be easy, and the
outcome will affect not only drug policy but the way in which the
country handles other federal-state conflicts sure to emerge.
The plan spills over to decentralization in immigration policy
Crick, et al, 13 [Emily Crick - Research Assistant, Global Drug Policy Observatory, Heather J.
Haase - Consultant, International Drug Policy Consortium/Harm Reduction Coalition, Dave
Bewley-Taylor - Director, Global Drug Policy Observatory, “Legally regulated cannabis markets in
the US: Implications and possibilities,” November,
http://konyvtar.eski.hu/tmpimg/378746103_0.pdf]
Furthermore, the CSA calls on the federal government ‘to enter into contractual agreements… to provide for cooperative enforcement and regulatory
activities.’151 This means that in theory the federal government could come to agreements with the individual states on their cannabis regulation
policies, which may be exactly what the Department of Justice is seeking to do in issuing its guidance. Indeed, some have argued that it would be
preferable for them to do so rather than let the states merely give up enforcing the federal prohibition on marijuana.152 It has also been argued that
despite the recent Department of Justice guidance there are no guarantees that state attorneys will cease to prosecute those who work in the
marijuana industry especially in the light of federal crackdowns on the medical marijuana industry.153 In a recent hearing held by the Senate Judiciary
Committee on the issue, James M. Cole, US Deputy Attorney General (and author of the memorandum) attempted
to put many of
to rest.154 Needless to say, the situation is evolving gradually and it remains to be
seen how this guidance is applied in practice. Moreover, these state-federal tensions must be
considered in a wider context, and it has been argued that allowing states to determine their own cannabis
these concerns
policy may result in other states demanding further independence with regards to other
aspects of federal policy such as gun control, immigration and health care.155
Decentralization causes highly restrictionist state measures and federal followon---collapses open immigration
S. Karthick Ramakrishnan 12, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of California,
Riverside; and Pratheepan Gulasekaram, Assistant Professor of Law, Santa Clara University,
Winter 2012, “ARTICLE: The Importance of the Political in Immigration Federalism,” Arizona
State Law Journal, 44 Ariz. St. L.J. 1431
Our purpose in this
paper has been to foreground the politicized nature of immigration policy and to provide a thick description
of the mechanism fomenting both state and local policy proliferation, and federal policy stagnation. This description, based on
extensive quantitative and qualitative investigation , lays the groundwork for a fundamental
rethinking of the current judicial and scholarly appraisals of this recent spate of state and local immigration
regulation. We leave that task for a future project, n225 but we briefly note some of those implications.
Because restrictionist issue entrepreneurs appear to be engaging a strategy of judicial, rather than congressional, engagement, the
Polarized Change model challenges some of the basic tenets of federalism analysis. When
state and local policy
proliferation is motivated by political, rather than regional demographic challenges, the purported values
of decentralized decisionmaking are highly compromised . In short, states and localities cease to be
idealized "laboratories" of policy experimentation and fail to produce instructive responses to
demographic problems. n226 Rather, by highlighting the salience of ethnic nationalism, the polarized
change model suggests that courts should consider equality-based, as opposed to structural power, frameworks to
evaluate the constitutionality of state and local immigration laws.
More globally, both courts and commentators must abandon functionalist explanations of state and local immigration regulation.
While scholars have carved out important normative space for state and local immigrant efforts to
integrate immigrants, they have done so by adopting the unsupported demographic
assumptions popularized by issue entrepreneurs. Moreover, Polarized Change challenges "steam-valve"
theories of immigration federalism which maintain that isolated subfederal enactments are
desirable because they dissipate restrictionist or anti-immigrant sentiment at the local [*1484] level,
thereby relieving the pressure to enact those laws at the federal level. Polarized Change,
however, suggests that proliferating policies in politically receptive subfederal jurisdictions builds,
rather than dissipates, pressure for restrictive action at the federal level and, more generally,
enshrines a more restrictionist status quo . These critical developments require extensive and detailed analysis,
which we pursue elsewhere.
For the better part of the last decade, states and localities have markedly increased their immigration-related
lawmaking. Our prior statistical analysis has shown that these laws are rarely driven by pressing demographic
problems and that local political contexts are better predictors of restrictive action. Further, we have argued that the federal
gridlock purportedly compelling these state and local laws is not merely a "given." Instead, it is
purposefully engineered by restrictive issue entrepreneurs who seek to proliferate restrictionist
legislation at the subfederal level . Thus, our new theory of immigration regulation elegantly
accounts for both federal legislative stagnation and state and local policy proliferation.
Turns the other advantage - criticism in international organizations and official
challenges under international law
Steinberg 2010 (James B., Deputy Secretary of State, former Dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the
University of Texas at Austin, Deputy National Security Adviser on the staff of the National Security Council, President and Director
of Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, affidavit filed in US v. Arizona, UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE
DISTRICT OF ARIZONA, Case 2:10-cv-01413-NVW Document 6-1 Filed 07/06/10, http://www.scribd.com/doc/33977183/U-S-vArizona-Exh-1-to-Motion-for-Preliminary-Injunction-Affidavit-of-James-Steinberg)
32.As both a matter of international law and practice, the
federal government is held accountable
internationally for the actions of state and local authorities regarding our treatment of foreign nationals.
International bodies and foreign governments do not typically distinguish between the conduct of
the national government and the conduct of an individual state within a federal system. This is starkly
evidenced by the United States' experience in cases where state and local government authorities
have failed to comply with U.S. obligations under the VCCR to provide consular notification to all foreign
nationals in U.S. custody. Failure to provide such notice by state officials has led to three suits by Paraguay, Germany
and Mexico against the United States in the International Court of Justice, an advisory opinion sought by
Mexico in the Inter- American Court of Human Rights, a petition against the United States in the Inter- American Commission on
Human Rights, and bilateral complaints by numerous foreign governments. 33.The United States takes seriously allegations that it
has failed to adhere to its international law obligations and foreign policy commitments and engages in these fora to address such
claims. Although the government is fully prepared to defend U.S. practices against unjustified claims of human rights shortcomings,
criticism from an international body over immigration human rights issues can directly undercut
the credibility of U.S. efforts to advance human rights and can lead to significant diplomatic
obstacles — both on immigration issues of bilateral concern and on other interests that might be the subject
of diplomatic negotiations. As discussed below, in this context, S.B 1070's sweep into subjects left properly to
federal direction and control subjects the United States to this criticism while denying the
United States the tools to decide for itself whether and how to adjust such policies. The federal
government should have to make its defenses or consider appropriate modifications only with regard to policies that are adopted
through a considered process that reflects the interests of all the American people
State immigration regulations kill the economy- uncertainty and inability to
operate across state lines
Fitz 10 (Marshall, Director of Immigration Policy at the Center for American Progress, Arizona Calls the Question, June,
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/06/candelaria_column.html)
The need for uniformity in immigration policy is undeniable. Congress’s power to establish the nation’s
immigration policy was enshrined in the Constitution because of the critical foreign policy implications that it triggers. But there are
equally significant practical implications in modern America. Businesses
operating in multiple states suffer
significant economic uncertainty and inefficiency when each state can impose different rules
and regulations governing hiring practices. And requiring U.S. citizens traveling throughout the
country to carry different documents in different states raises obvious practical concerns and
constitutional questions. This movement to enact state and local immigration laws and regulations
threatens legal uniformity and social cohesion. It is time to put the brakes on this movement once and for all, and
the administration’s brief in Candelaria is an important first step.
Econ decline causes major power war- stats
Reghr 2013 (Ernie, Senior Fellow in Arctic Security at The Simons Foundation, 2-4-13, “Intrastate Conflict: Data, Trends and
Drivers” http://www.isn.ethz.ch/Digital-Library/Articles/SpecialFeature/Detail/?lng=en&id=158597&tabid=1453496807&contextid774=158597&contextid775=158627)
“The most robustly significant predictor of [armed] conflict risk and its duration is some
indicator of economic prosperity. At a higher income people have more to lose from the
destructiveness of conflict; and higher per-capita income implies a better functioning social
contract, institutions and state capacity.”[3] This correlation between underdevelopment
and armed conflict is confirmed in a 2008 paper by Thania Paffenholz[4] which notes that
“since 1990, more than 50% of all conflict-prone countries have been low income states…. Two
thirds of all armed conflicts take place in African countries with the highest poverty rates. Econometric research found a
correlation between the poverty rate and likelihood of armed violence….[T]he lower the GDP per capita in a country, the higher
the likelihood of armed conflict.” Of course, it is important to point out that this is not a claim that there is a direct causal
connection between poverty and armed conflict. To repeat, the causes of conflict are complex and context specific,
nevertheless, says Paffenholz, there
is a clear correlation between a low and declining per capita
income and a country’s vulnerability to conflict. It is also true, on the other hand, that there are low income
countries that experience precipitous economic decline, like Zambia in the 1980s and 1990s, without suffering the kind of
turmoil that has visited economically more successful countries like Kenya and Cote d’Ivoire. Referring to both Zambia and
Nigeria, Pafenholz says these are cases in which “the social compact” has proven to be resilient. Both have formal and informal
mechanisms that are able to address grievances in ways that allowed them to be aired and resolved or managed without
recourse to violence. A brief review of literature on economics and armed conflict, published in the Journal of the Royal Society
of Medicine, indicates the complexity and imprecision behind the question, “does poverty cause conflict?” While many of the
“world’s poorest countries are riven by armed conflict,” and while poverty, conflict and under-development set up a cycle of
dysfunction in which each element of the cycle is exacerbated by the other, it is also the case that “conflict obviously does not
just afflict the poorest countries” – as Northern Ireland and the former Yugoslavia demonstrate. “Many poor countries are not
at war; shared poverty may not be a destabilizing influence. Indeed, economic growth can destabilize, as the wars in countries
afflicted by an abundance of particular natural resources appear to show.”[5] Another review of the literature makes the
general point that “the
escalation of conflict during economic downturns is more likely in
countries recovering from conflict, or fragile states.” That makes Africa especially vulnerable on two counts:
economic deprivation and recent armed conflict are present in a relatively high number of states, making the continent
especially vulnerable to economic shocks. As a general rule, “weak
economies often translate into weak and
fragile states and the presence of violent conflict, which in turn prevents economic growth.”
One study argues that “the risk of war in any given country is determined by the initial level
of income, the rate of economic growth and the level of dependency on primary commodity
exports.” Changes in rates of economic growth thus lead to changes in threats of conflict. As
unemployment rises in fragile states this can “exacerbate conflict due to comparatively
better income opportunities for young men in rebel groups as opposed to labour markets.”[6]
The concentration of armed conflict in lower income countries is also reflected in the conflict tabulation by Project Ploughshares
over the past quarter century. The 2009 Human Development Index ranks 182 countries in four categories of Human
Development – Very High, High, Medium, Low. Of the 98 countries in the Medium and Low categories of human development in
2009, 55 per cent experienced war on their territories in the previous 24 years. In the same period, only 24 per cent of countries
in the High human development category saw war within their borders, while just two (5 per cent) countries in the Very High
The wars of the recent
past were overwhelmingly fought on the territories of states at the low end of the human
development scale. A country’s income level is thus a strong indicator of its risk of being
involved in sustained armed conflict. Low income countries lack the capacity to create
conditions conducive to serving the social, political, and economic welfare of their people.
And when economic inequality is linked to differences between identity groups, the
correlation to armed conflict is even stronger. In other words, group based inequalities are
especially destabilizing.[7] These failures in human security are of course heavily shaped by external factors, notably
human development ranking had war on their territory (the UK re Northern Ireland and Israel).
international economic and security conditions and the interests of the major powers (in short,
globalization),[8] and these factors frequently combine with internal political/religious/ethnic
circumstances that create conditions especially conducive to conflict and armed conflict.
Food shocks inevitable – too many alt causes.
Tipson 12 [Frederick, special advisor to the Center for Science,Technology and Peacebuilding at the U.S. Institute
of Peace, where hewas a 2011-12 Jennings Randolph Senior Fellow. He worked previously for the UN Development
Programme, Microsoft, the MarkleFoundation, the Council on Foreign Relations, Hongkong Telecom,AT&T, the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the University ofVirginia School of Law. Global Food Insecurity and
"Political Malnutrition," June 2012, Number 7, German Marshall Fund Connections, http://www.gmfus.org/wpcontent/blogs.dir/1/files_mf/1339595984Tipson_GlobalFoodInsecurity_Jun12.pdf]
Meanwhile, the political dimensions of “food insecurity” go well beyond our compassion for
people in the poorest countries who are most vulnerable to famine and malnutrition. Even
during the remainder of this decade, we face a transition from localized food shortages and
insecurities toward a more pervasive environment of global “food shocks” that have serious
political consequences even for the richer world. 3 The combined effects of population trends,
climate changes, water shortages, soil erosion or contamination, increased meat consumption,
fisheries depletion, major livestock epidemics, or serious crop failures in overlapping and
cascading ripple effects will strain already-vulnerable economies and political systems. Sudden
price increases or shortages could prompt volatile popular reactions, especially if citizens even
in “well-fed” locations lose trust in markets and governments to assure their access to adequate
food supplies.
Can’t solve – political reforms are a prerequisite.
Tipson 12 [Frederick, special advisor to the Center for Science,Technology and Peacebuilding at the U.S. Institute
of Peace, where hewas a 2011-12 Jennings Randolph Senior Fellow. He worked previously for the UN Development
Programme, Microsoft, the MarkleFoundation, the Council on Foreign Relations, Hongkong Telecom,AT&T, the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the University ofVirginia School of Law. Global Food Insecurity and
"Political Malnutrition," June 2012, Number 7, German Marshall Fund Connections, http://www.gmfus.org/wpcontent/blogs.dir/1/files_mf/1339595984Tipson_GlobalFoodInsecurity_Jun12.pdf]
All farming, like all politics (so the saying goes), is local. The conditions that affect agricultural
productivity begin with the water, climate, soil, diet, community and family structure, land
tenure system, and other localized factors that account for the distinctive farming cultures of
particular locales. But they also depend on those “public goods” that effective governments
facilitate, including regional infrastructure, reliable land transfer systems, available credit
options, and some minimum level of public order — not to mention, in the best cases, schools,
clinics, and municipal services. Unfortunately, under the strain of population growth and
economic competition, it is exactly these kinds of political support systems that are lacking in
many of the communities that need them most. Political capacity therefore often becomes the
“gating factor” in determining how ambitious an agricultural reform agenda can be undertaken.
Even the best combinations of seeds, irrigation, fertilizer, and crop rotation will not succeed in
enhancing yields and resilience without the political underpinnings (and “readiness” to change)
4 that enable their implementation. One promising approach for increasing local political
capacity is to expand and supplement the resources and capabilities of “agricultural extension”
agencies. The traditional channels for technical assistance to farmers have centered around
extension agents, who are generally employees of local, provincial, or national governments, but
who may also be experts employed by suppliers, international development agencies, or NGOs.
The ideal agent has the knowledge and skills to assist local farmers in increasing their
productivity and reducing their risk of crop or financial failure. Drawing on the latest science to
improve crop varieties, create safer fertilizers and pesticides, reduce losses both before and after
harvests, and apply more productive farming methods, extension services may be the best hope
for achieving the scale of increases necessary to feed the planet. In many locations, however,
the principal impediments to increased productivity and profitability are not technical or
economic but political — problems of land tenure, water access, ethnic hostility, community
organization, or corruption. Up against these broader challenges, even the best extension
services can only go so far. Without progress in addressing the political factors, the prospects
for substantial improvements in agricultural performance can be severely limited.